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Charlotte, NC (Tuesday, November 4, 2025) – The Environmental Training Initiative immediately introduced the 5 2025-2026 recipients of The Nationwide Environmental Training Basis (NEEF) Greening STEM Grant. The Environmental Training Initiative by Discovery Training with NEEF and different companions is a first-of-its-kind program designed to interact college students in environmental science, empower them to make knowledgeable choices for wholesome environments, and promote civic engagement. Discovery Training is the maker of important PreK-12 studying options utilized in lecture rooms all over the world.
The Greening STEM Grants help applications that infuse environmental science and assets into faculty curriculum centered on student-directed investigations of related subjects of analysis, native environmental points, or points impacting native public lands.
“Via these grants, we search to problem formal and nonformal educators to design and ship STEM programming that engages youth in place-based studying,” mentioned Robert Sendrey, program director for environmental schooling at NEEF. “We additionally hope to empower educators to construct a tradition that values utilizing the surroundings as a context for bettering pupil studying and achievement.”
Tasks that actively concerned college students in citizen/neighborhood science or environmental monitoring throughout the 2025–2026 faculty 12 months had been particularly highlighted, reflecting the worth of experiential, place-based STEM schooling. The next tasks have been chosen to obtain as much as $7,000 every in STEM grant funding:
Rising Inexperienced
Fairfield County College District in Winnsboro, South Carolina
The “Rising Inexperienced” challenge is a student-led greenhouse initiative in Winnsboro, South Carolina, centered on hands-on environmental STEM studying for Grades 5-6. The challenge entails 80 college students and goals to boost Twenty first-century expertise by immersive studying of earth and life sciences. Educational methods combine Greening STEM strategies, together with project-based and community-based approaches. Challenge companions embrace Fairfield Profession and Expertise Middle, Sandhill Analysis and Training Middle, and numerous different stakeholders.
Exploring Earth & Past: Connecting Native Studying to the Cosmos
Fairfield County College District in Winnsboro, South Carolina
Throughout this interdisciplinary challenge for Grades 5-6, roughly 100 college students will discover ideas associated to Earth’s place within the universe, gentle and shadows, and gravitational pressure by place-based investigations, moon section journals, digital and 3D scale mannequin constructing, and interactive science labs utilizing actual information. The challenge will culminate with a area journey to the South Carolina State Museum Planetarium in Columbia, South Carolina, the place college students will take part in a full-dome immersive planetarium present and work together with museum displays that reinforce classroom studying. Companions embrace the South Carolina State Museum Planetarium, native STEM professionals, and neighborhood members.
College Backyard
R.E. Davis Faculty Preparatory Academy in Sumter, South Carolina
This challenge entails a faculty backyard initiative that integrates STEM lessons and an after-school gardening membership. The anticipated affect contains educating over 20 college students gardening expertise in small areas. Educational methods contain pupil involvement, neighborhood help, and curriculum integration, together with project-based studying and using a Backyard STEM science curriculum. Native companions like the Clemson College Cooperative Extension and Sumter County Grasp Gardeners Affiliation will help gardening tasks and academic actions. Moreover, the challenge will activity college students with designing robots that would assist enhance classroom studying whereas enhancing productiveness within the faculty backyard.
Bengal Biodiesel
Blythewood Excessive College, Richland College District Two in Blythewood, South Carolina
The Bengal Biodiesel program at Blythewood Excessive College recycles cooking oil into biodiesel for college transport and produces hand cleaning soap from glycerin waste. Funding for this challenge will assist increase the present biodiesel program whereas partnering with organizations for pupil studying experiences and coaching college students to develop into leaders in sustainability. Roughly 40 college students will achieve marketable expertise and over 100 hours of hands-on expertise by this system, which entails producing biodiesel for college buses. This system has partnered with organizations such because the Palmetto Clear Fuels Coalition, South Carolina Vitality Workplace, and Inexperienced Vitality Biofuel to supply internships, industry-standard procedures, and audits to boost the scholar expertise.
Free Residence Inexperienced Crew
Free Residence Elementary College in Canton, Georgia
The “Free Residence Inexperienced Crew” challenge at Free Residence Elementary College goals to implement a Greening STEM challenge involving school-wide recycling and STEM actions to scale back their carbon footprint, increase current STEM applications, and interact 300 college students in real-time environmental affect consciousness. The challenge contains educational methods specializing in real-world conservation, information assortment, and hands-on experiences with the college’s STEM Cart, which has developmentally acceptable STEM video games and exercise kits for every grade degree. Challenge companions embrace Free Residence Elementary’s Inexperienced College Coordinator—who is accountable for exhibiting college students which supplies are acceptable to recycle at bins situated round campus—and the native PTA, which is able to assist obtain challenge objectives of decreasing plastic use, reducing vitality prices, and growing neighborhood engagement.
The funding recipients had been chosen from among the many members of the Discovery Educator Community, or DEN. A world neighborhood of schooling professionals, the DEN connects members throughout faculty programs and all over the world by social media, digital conferences, and in-person occasions, fostering worthwhile concept sharing and inspiration. This 12 months, the DEN is celebrating 20 years of connecting educators to their most beneficial useful resource: one another.
“Analysis exhibits that college students thrive when classroom classes are partaking and linked to the broader world. These real-world connections not solely strengthen important pondering but additionally enhance tutorial achievement. We’re proud to have a good time every of the STEM Grant recipients for his or her progressive work in increasing the studying past the classroom,” mentioned Catherine Dunlop, Senior Vice President of Company Partnerships at Discovery Training. “Along with NEEF, we’re excited to help these transformative tasks and watch them come to life.”
For extra details about Discovery Training’s award-winning digital assets {and professional} studying options, go to www.discoveryeducation.com, and keep linked with Discovery Training on social media by LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and Fb.
To entry Environmental Training Initiative assets, go to environmentaleducationinitiative.discoveryeducation.com. Customers of Discovery Training Expertise can discover these assets on the Environmental Training Initiative channel.
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About NEEF
The Nationwide Environmental Training Basis (NEEF) is the nation’s main group in lifelong environmental studying, creating alternatives for folks to expertise and study in regards to the surroundings in ways in which enhance their lives and the well being of the planet. Congressionally chartered in 1990, NEEF is a non-partisan, non-advocacy group working to make the surroundings extra accessible, related, and linked to folks’s day by day lives.
Be taught extra at NEEFusa.org—or comply with NEEF on Fb (Fb.com/NEEFusa) and on Twitter at @NEEFusa.
About Discovery Training
Discovery Training is the worldwide edtech chief whose state-of-the-art, PreK-12, digital options assist educators interact all college students and help larger tutorial achievement. Via award-winning multimedia content material, educational helps, and progressive classroom instruments which can be efficient, partaking, and straightforward to make use of, Discovery Training helps educators ship highly effective studying experiences. Discovery Training serves roughly 4.5 million educators and 45 million college students worldwide, and its assets are accessed in over 100 nations and territories. Via partnerships with districts, states, and trusted organizations, Discovery Training empowers lecturers with important edtech options that encourage curiosity, construct confidence, and speed up studying. Be taught extra at www.discoveryeducation.com.
Contacts
Amy Skalmusky
Nationwide Environmental Training Basis
Electronic mail: askalmusky@neefusa.org
Grace Maliska
Discovery Training
Electronic mail: gmaliska@discoveryed.com
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